Many consumer items, such as Christmas lights, are sold in long, flexible strings. These items are sold in containers that conveniently store the items, yet once removed from the container, the consumer may want to store the item between uses. Many of the containers in which the items are sold are not convenient for such storage. The containers may be bulky or simply not strong enough for such consumer storage.
Some consumers simply wind the items and store them in a box. As is well know to anyone who has tried to use items, such as Christmas lights, after such storage, these items seem to always be tangled no matter how carefully they are stored. Such tangling is not only onerous for initial deployment of the items, it may even create a possibility of damaging the items during storage or deployment.
For this reason, the art includes several proposals for storing items such as Christmas lights. While somewhat successful in preventing tangling, most of these proposals include storage means that are cumbersome and difficult to control during both storage and deployment of the items. This is especially troublesome to the elderly, and especially if the items are being placed in difficult-to-reach places, such as on top of a house.
Still further, many of the presently-available storage means do not facilitate testing of the items stored before they are deployed. That is, for example, in the case of Christmas lights, the lights must be strung out and then tested, and then, installed after the testing is completed.
Still further, since many industries, such as the Christmas light industry, are quite competitive, any elements included in the Christmas lights should be as economical as possible. Some of the prior art storage containers used for Christmas lights are difficult to produce and may be expensive thereby inhibiting the commercial acceptance thereof.
Therefore, there is a need for a means for storing items such as Christmas lights that is convenient to use and is easy to store, yet facilitates the testing of the lights prior to deploying them from the storage means while still being economical to produce.
For the sake of convenience, this disclosure will be directed to Christmas lights; however, it is understood that the storage means disclosed herein can be used in conjunction with any long, flexible items similar to such Christmas lights, and no limitation is intended by the reference to Christmas lights.